Privacy

Privacy Policy

Old Habits runs entirely on your Mac. This policy explains what that means in practice: what data exists, where it lives and whom to talk to about it.

Effective October 14, 2026.

In short

No account, no telemetry, no usage statistics. Nothing you do in Old Habits is sent to us or to anyone else.
One connection today: the app checks the update feed at oldhabits.app at launch and once a day. When the trial and sales open, license activation, a single time (and deactivation, if you ask for it), will be added to it. That check carries the app’s version and, like any connection, your IP address — no identifier of yours and no system profile.
Everything the app stores stays on your Mac — preferences, Old Habits Notes drafts — and clipboard history not even that: it lives in memory only.
This website uses no cookies and no tracking — which is why there is no cookie banner.
We don’t sell or share personal data for advertising.
When the trial and sales open, there will also be the email used to issue and send your license code and the activation record (see Trial and purchase).
The only personal data that reaches us today is what you send yourself when you write to suporte@oldhabits.app.

Who is responsible

The controller of the data processed on behalf of Old Habits is Eduardo Valenza, an individual based in Brazil, responsible for the app and this website.

The channel for any privacy matter — including data subject requests under Brazil’s General Data Protection Law (LGPD, Law 13,709/2018), the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the UK GDPR and the other laws listed below — is suporte@oldhabits.app. As a small-scale processing agent, Old Habits has not appointed a data protection officer (ANPD Resolution CD/ANPD 2/2022); this address serves as the contact channel.

What the app stores on your Mac

What Old Habits writes stays in your macOS user account and is not sent anywhere:

Preferences — which tools are on, shortcuts and each tool’s options — saved through macOS’s own preferences system.
Clipboard: the history of what you copy lives in the app’s memory only. It is never written to disk and is gone when you quit Old Habits, turn the tool off or clear the history; optionally, also when you lock the screen. Items password managers mark as concealed are left out, and you can exclude whole apps from the history.
Old Habits Notes: tabs with unsaved text are kept as drafts in ~/Library/Application Support/Old Habits/Notes, so they come back the way you left them. For a saved tab, only the file path and position are kept — the text stays in your file.
Old Habits Explorer: search is local, through macOS’s own Spotlight index or a scan of your Mac’s folders. Favorites and recent items live in the preferences.
Old Habits Paint: opens and saves only the files you choose.
License (once the trial and sales open): the license email is stored on your Mac, and the app may show it as “Licensed to …”.
Keychain: the app keeps a random session key there, used only so the parts of Old Habits can talk to each other securely. It holds no data of yours.

This data only leaves your Mac through backups you set up yourself in macOS, such as Time Machine. To delete it, uninstall the app (see Support).

System permissions

macOS asks for your permission for each thing Old Habits does outside its own windows. None of them makes the app send data off your Mac.

Permission	What for
Accessibility	Moving, snapping and arranging other apps’ windows, responding to keyboard shortcuts and pasting straight from the clipboard history.
Screen & System Audio Recording (optional)	Only to show window thumbnails in Switcher, the Dock and Snap’s suggestions. The images are used on screen, right away, and are neither saved nor sent; the app doesn’t record the screen or audio. Without it, each window shows its icon and title.
Full Disk Access (optional)	Only for Old Habits Explorer to list, empty and restore the Trash. The rest of Explorer works without it.
Desktop, Documents and Downloads	macOS itself asks, once per folder, when Old Habits Explorer opens one of them.
Automation	Old Habits doesn’t control other apps. A Quick Action of yours might, and then macOS asks for this permission when you run it.
Notifications (optional)	Only to tell you about updates, if Notify about updates is on.
Energy helper (optional)	Only if you choose Don’t sleep in Energy: macOS asks you to allow the helper in System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions › Allow in the Background, with an administrator password. It only keeps the Mac from sleeping when you close the lid. Choosing Sleep or turning the module off removes it.

You can review and revoke any permission at any time in System Settings › Privacy & Security.

The app’s connection: updates

Old Habits updates itself with Sparkle, an open-source component. It is, today, the app’s only connection to the internet (the planned license activation is under Trial and purchase):

At launch and then once a day, the app downloads the update feed from oldhabits.app over HTTPS. When there is a new version, it also downloads its package from the same domain, and installs it only if the signature checks out.
The request carries what any macOS connection carries — your IP address, the date and time and the system’s standard headers, such as your preferred language — plus an identification like Old Habits/<version> Sparkle/<version>. Sparkle’s optional system profile (Mac model, macOS version, language) is turned off in the code.
The request carries no user, installation or machine identifier.
Install updates automatically, in the Updates tab of the preferences, decides whether the new version is downloaded and installed on its own; the feed check happens either way.

The feed is served by Cloudflare (see This website), which logs these requests in the same technical logs as the site. We don’t keep or combine those records.

Trial and purchase

The trial and sales are not open yet. When they open, the following is planned — and this policy will be updated with the details before they open:

Free download: anyone can download the installer (DMG). On first use, the app asks for the email and the code you received by email. The code is digitally signed and carries the email, the type (trial or purchase) and the issue date; the app rejects an invalid code right away, on the Mac itself.
Trial code: you request it on this website, with your email; it is free and valid for 14 days. We use your email to issue, send and resend the code and to provide support (performance of a contract or pre-contractual steps at your request — LGPD, art. 7, V; GDPR, art. 6(1)(b)).
Purchase: made on this website, with payment processed by a payment provider named at checkout, which will receive what the purchase requires (such as name, email, country and payment method) under its own policy. After payment, the purchase code arrives at the email used for the purchase. We don’t receive your card number.
Activation: once the code is accepted, a single time per Mac, over the internet: the app sends the code, a Mac identifier that cannot be reversed to the original data and the Mac’s model (for example, “MacBook Air” — never the computer’s name), and the server records the code, that identifier, the model and the activation date. This is used to limit the number of Macs per license, to count the trial period by the server’s date and to show your Macs on the Manage license page. A trial code needs the internet to activate; a purchase code is accepted offline, and activation happens on its own when there is a connection, within 7 days. Once activated, the app works without the internet and doesn’t check the license again. The basis is performance of the contract (LGPD, art. 7, V; GDPR, art. 6(1)(b)) and legitimate interest in preventing fraud (LGPD, art. 7, IX; GDPR, art. 6(1)(f)).
Manage license: a page planned for this website. You enter the purchase email and get an access link by email, no password; there you see your activated Macs, by model and date, and can release one. The app can also deactivate its own Mac.
Marketing: only with your consent, asked for separately and withdrawable at any time. Requesting a code or buying doesn’t put you on any list.

This website

oldhabits.app is hosted on Cloudflare Pages (Cloudflare, Inc., USA).
It uses no cookies, analytics, tracking pixels, forms or third-party scripts. Fonts and images are served from the site itself. Since there are no cookies and no tracking, there is no cookie banner to accept.
Like any server, Cloudflare receives and may record in technical logs the IP address, date and time, page requested and browser of each visitor, to deliver the site and protect it from abuse, for the period and under the terms of Cloudflare’s privacy policy. The Cloudflare dashboard shows us traffic totals only, without identifying visitors.

When you write to support

When you write to suporte@oldhabits.app, we receive your email address and whatever you send — text, screenshots, reports. We use it only to reply and solve your case. We don’t sell, rent or use it for advertising. Please don’t send passwords or personal content that isn’t needed to understand the problem.

Legal bases

Processing	LGPD (Brazil)	GDPR / UK GDPR
Update feed check (IP, date and time, version)	Legitimate interest in delivering fixes and keeping the app secure (art. 7, IX)	Legitimate interests, art. 6(1)(f)
Email support	Performance of a contract or pre-contractual steps at your request (art. 7, V) and legitimate interest in keeping the history (art. 7, IX)	Performance of a contract, art. 6(1)(b), and legitimate interests, art. 6(1)(f)
Email to issue, send and resend the trial or purchase code, send the access link to the Manage license page and provide support (once open)	Performance of a contract or pre-contractual steps (art. 7, V)	Performance of a contract, art. 6(1)(b)
Activating and releasing Macs: code, irreversible Mac identifier, Mac model and date (once open)	Performance of a contract (art. 7, V) and legitimate interest in preventing fraud (art. 7, IX)	Performance of a contract, art. 6(1)(b), and legitimate interests, art. 6(1)(f)
Marketing email (if any)	Consent, asked for separately (art. 7, I)	Consent, art. 6(1)(a)
Website technical logs	Legitimate interest in delivering and protecting the site (art. 7, IX)	Legitimate interests, art. 6(1)(f)

You can object to processing based on legitimate interests by writing to suporte@oldhabits.app. For the update feed, objecting in practice means not using the app, since without the check it gets no fixes.

How long we keep data

Data on your Mac: under your control; gone when you uninstall the app.
Website and feed technical logs: for Cloudflare’s retention period, under its policy. We don’t export or keep them.
Support emails: for as long as needed to resolve your request. After that, the conversation is kept only if the law requires it or if it may serve as evidence in a claim about the purchase — and only until the legal deadline for that claim runs out. You can ask for deletion sooner; we refuse only when the conversation must be kept for one of these two reasons.

International transfers

Cloudflare and the providers that deliver email also process data outside the country of the visitor or sender, including in the United States. These transfers rely on the safeguards those providers offer, such as standard contractual clauses, under article 33 of the LGPD and Chapter V of the GDPR. The person responsible for Old Habits is in Brazil: data that reaches us by email is handled from Brazil.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask, free of charge, at suporte@oldhabits.app:

confirmation that we process your data, and access to it;
rectification of incomplete, inaccurate or outdated data;
erasure, anonymization or blocking of data that is unnecessary or processed unlawfully;
portability of your data to another provider;
objection to processing based on legitimate interests, and restriction of processing;
information about whom we share data with.

We reply within 15 days (LGPD, art. 19, II), which also meets the GDPR’s one-month deadline. Data the app keeps on your Mac is already under your control: we have no copy of it. We make no automated decisions about you.

You can also complain to a data protection authority: the ANPD in Brazil, the supervisory authority of your country in the European Union, or the ICO in the United Kingdom.

Your rights by country

Brazil (LGPD): the rights in article 18, above, and complaints to the ANPD.
European Union and EEA (GDPR) and United Kingdom (UK GDPR): the rights in articles 15 to 21, above, and complaints to your country’s supervisory authority or the ICO.
United States — California (CCPA/CPRA): Old Habits does not sell or share personal information (as the law defines “sale” and “share”), uses no sensitive personal information and does no targeted advertising. You can ask to know, correct and delete the data we hold, without being discriminated against for it.
Canada (PIPEDA): you can ask for access and correction and complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
Japan (APPI): you can ask for disclosure, correction and suspension of use of your data; transfers to other countries are described under International transfers.
Australia (Privacy Act 1988): you can ask for access and correction and complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

In every case, the channel is suporte@oldhabits.app.

Children

Old Habits is not directed at children and collects no one’s data through the app.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the new version appears on this page with an updated effective date. Any change to what the app does with data — and the opening of sales — is described here before it happens, not after.